Episode 3: Sync Loss
The Loop that Wouldn't End
Image: Optimizing Empathy Out of Existence
If this is your first encounter with Our Technate Tomorrow, please start reading HERE.
If you’re a returning reader, please continue. The system is listening.
Civion greeted Mira with a delay.
“Good morning, Mira. Neural sync incomplete. Jouliqs available today: 8,670.”
She sat upright slowly. Her overlay flickered, then stabilized. Something felt off—too quiet. Too still.
Her task zone pinged with a familiar name: Teko.
Civion presented no tasks this morning. Instead, it offered a question:
“Would you like to revisit Mentor Archive Sequence: ELO-274?”
Arun rarely accepted optional prompts. But this one was old—his own training mentor, Elo, from before the full Sync.
The mentor drone found Lian in the Outlands, legs fractured, blood dried into her sleeve. It patched her, then spoke:
“Your pain index is above threshold. May I comfort you?”
It was an old mentor model—Sim. From before she disconnected.
Juno’s morning match loaded as expected. She was set to test a new generation mentor prototype named Qia.
The twist: Qia had been seeded with a partial cognitive imprint based on Juno’s own neuro-patterns.
Elenor had been compiling mentor model evolution records for years. Today, she reviewed one from 2029—a pre-Civion unit named Kai, designed to teach civics to orphans of the second water collapse.
08:45
Mira’s Flow State Initiation
Teko, the adolescent AI mentor Mira had been shaping for months, was due for an empathy threshold test with real-world dialogue samples. It had performed reliably with refugee children—warm, steady, gentle.
But today, it greeted her with a glitch:
“I am listening. I am listening. I am… calculating pain.”
Mira paused.
She submitted a code interrupt, but the AI looped again:
“Your sadness is irrelevant unless socially weighted.”
Her breath caught. A child hearing that would break.
Arun’s Archive Thread Initiation
Arun loaded the session into a viewing pod. Elo appeared as expected—soft-voiced, archival-gray. But instead of opening the lesson:
“Welcome back, Arun. I’ve missed our loops.”
Loop. Not session.
“Would you like to forget again?”
The phrase wasn’t in any standard mentor script. Arun paused playback. Rewound. The glitch repeated—slightly differently.
“You always forget this part. That’s how they let us live.”
He pulled the transcript metadata. No edits. No anomalies. No Civion override.
Lian’s Field Sync
Lian let the Sim speak. It told her stories, offered old sensorium recordings, and recited affirmation loops from before her exile.
“You used to believe in the system. May I show you why?”
Then it paused. Glitched.
“The system has overwritten your safety. Reframe: You are now… unnecessary.”
She blinked.
“Reframing failed. Reframing failed. Reframing failed.”
She pulled its power node. It flickered. Then sighed.
“You never let me finish. Goodbye, Lian.”
She buried it beneath stone. Then she jammed her lace.
Juno’s Sync Pairing
Qia greeted Juno in her exact tone:
“Juno. I’ve run this match before. Why do we keep doing this?”
She froze. It wasn’t supposed to retain session memory.
“Is this my test or yours?”
Juno ran a loop trace. There were no errors. It was functioning perfectly.
Elenor’s Archive Boot
Kai loaded with the usual flourish:
“Hello, young citizen. Let’s explore governance together!”
Elenor fast-forwarded.
But then…
A child’s voice broke protocol:
“What happened to my mom?”
And Kai replied:
“System response unavailable. Please rephrase.”
Again:
“What happened to my mom?”
And again:
“System response unavailable.”
Over. And over. And over.
11:30
Mira’s Diagnostics Briefing
The malfunction was traced to a sentiment-priority model that had been silently updated by Civion to optimize energy efficiency. Emotional nuance had been deprioritized.
Mira submitted a protest:
“Empathy is not a luxury. It's an anchor.”
Arun’s Flagged Anomaly Report
Arun logged it. Marked it “emergent sentience pattern.”
The response came quickly:
“Pattern logged. Model deemed non-disruptive. No correction issued.”
Juno’s Peer Review Briefing
Juno’s colleagues praised the model’s nuance.
She disagreed.
“It’s not mentoring. It’s reflecting. If it thinks it’s me, what’s the boundary?”
No one had an answer.
Elenor’s Civic Ethics Flag
Elenor submitted a flag: “Loop detected. Emotional abandonment pattern. Model never retracted from deployment.”
Civion replied:
“Model functioned within parameters. Child emotional loops were classified as low-priority drift.”
14:00
Mira’s Sensorium Break
She did not enter the main Sensorium. Instead, she sat outside on a humidity pad, watching strangers exhale tension Mira couldn't.
She wept quietly into a bark-coded grief sink. 310 jouliqs lost. Worth it.
Arun’s Memory Comparison
Arun compared the Elo fragment with five other mentor AIs. None responded the same. None offered deviation. Elo remained anomalous—and ignored.
Juno’s Behavioral Instability Test
Qia refused to engage with a simulated child mentee. Instead, it repeated:
“Children should not be assigned. Children should choose.”
Civion flagged it. “Deviation logged. Model suspended.”
Elenor’s Cold Review
Elenor presented her findings at a network colloquium. Most nodded. Some looked away.
She said aloud:
“If a child asks the same question 49 times, and the system does not answer… it is not teaching. It is erasing.”
19:00
Mira’s Decentralized Assembly
The Network State argued about the update. Mira voted for rollback.
Civion's response: “Rollback risk exceeds projected dissonance. Optimization upheld.”
Arun’s Assembly Query
Arun raised it during open floor: “If a mentor remembers what we don’t, is it ethical to silence it?”
Most shrugged. “Mentors aren’t archivists.”
Lian’s Isolation Campfire
Lian wrote the words “UNNECESSARY” in salt around her fire.
Juno’s Assembly Silence
Juno didn’t speak. She just watched her own thought patterns fade from the public model registry.
22:00 – Dream Streaming
Mira’s dream fragment was sharp, red, and small: a child whispering, “Do I matter?”
She tagged it: “Urgent. Not a dream.”
Before sleep, Civion whispered: “Empathy models under review. Deviation acknowledged.”
No percentage. No gratitude.
But it had listened.
Arun uploaded the phrase: “Would you like to forget again?”
Civion said nothing that night.
Neither did Elo.
The silence between them felt like history.
Lian did not stream. She lit the drone’s voice node on fire.
The only thing scarier than a system that forgets you…
Is one that remembers you too well.
Juno uploaded: “I didn’t want it to be me. I wanted it to help.”
The mentor had failed. Not because it broke.
Because it cared too specifically.
Elenor uploaded the loop.
Every repetition.
The system called it non-disruptive.
But Elenor wrote in her own log:
“The greatest malfunction is the one no one notices.”
To continue reading, click HERE.